If “Social Media Is A Cocktail Party,” This Book Is The Sloppy, Slurring Drunk In The Room

“People want to work with people they like. It’s an age-old truism. That’s the underlying rationale of all networking -- including social networking -- and an idea that’s spawned thousands of cocktail parties.”

I’ve been trying to alternate between fiction and non-fiction books this year, and with my recent foray into B2B social media, I thought I’d give “Social Media is a Cocktail Party: Why You Already Know the Rules of Social Media Marketing” a shot. Written by Jim Tobin and Lisa Braziel of local Ignite Social Media, it used simple, concise language and doses of humor to take on a rather complex subject as quickly as possible.

While there were some good examples and ideas given, the overwhelming impression is that this was put together very fast, resulting in a sloppy, error-filled book. Even the presentation was hard to read, with way too much content and way too few graphics or ways of breaking up the text. There were some case studies given, but the closing of each chapter featured, essentially, a conglomeration of blog posts that looked to be hastily thrown in with little editing.

In addition, so much has changed since this book was written, even if it was only a couple of years ago. Of course, that is not the book’s fault, but it was yet another factor in making this one a big swing and a miss for me.

On the plus side, they did unearth a gem of a quote from Bob Lauterborn that I loved and shared with my business development team:

“‘The only sustainable source of competitive advantage is superior knowledge of the customer.’”

It could be because of my background as a copy editor, but for someone like me, it is hard to get past the litany of grammatical errors, which were even found on the back cover and in the preface. For lack of a better way to describe it, it appears that Tobin and Braziel can talk the talk, but they can’t write (the) right. Lazy and sloppy was my initial impression, and right or wrong, there was very little “Social Media is a Cocktail Party” could do to sway that opinion, even if it had been a tremendously insightful tome.

“The power of social media is not just in the facility of the tools. That’s important, to be sure. But the real importance in both marketing and product development is that a prospect that engages with you is the best possible prospect.”